The history of Election Day in the U.S. is fairly interesting. It was officially set as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in 1845 (by Congress); they essentially followed a model already in existence in New York state at the time. Since 1792, it had been a bit more scattershot, involving a 34-day grace period of sorts. Tuesday was selected because, in 1845, the U.S. was still predominantly an agricultural society. Tuesday didn’t interfere with church day (Sunday) or market day (Wednesday), and allowed people to travel to their polling place on Monday and/or Tuesday if need be. In the nearly 200 years since, people have introduced bills to move voting to the weekends. There’s a whole website about the cause.

I’m a big fan of elections and voting, personally (MERICA!). Get out and vote if you get the chance. If you need some final motivations, read this. Or go ahead and watch this (there are several more in this vein; just toss a ‘Why vote?’ search on YouTube):